Miles Shoes Incorporated

List of Deals

The founder of Miles Shoes was Murray M. Rosenberg, a son of immigrants from Russia who settled in Utica, New York, in 1881. After first working with his father as a peddler, at the age of nineteen he took a part-time job selling shoes. In 1917 he opened his first family shoe store in New York City under his own name, later changing the name for that store and subsequent stores to the name of his brother, Miles. In 1924 the company owning the growing shoe chain was incorporated in New York as Murray M. Rosenberg, Inc. It was renamed Miles Shoes, Inc., in April 1946.

Sales languished for Miles during World War II. Yet sales grew rapidly after the war. The company earned $207,517 on sales of $12.5 million in 1945. Five years later, in 1950, Miles earned $1.2 million from record sales of $22.0 million. In 1945 it employed 450 people and by 1950 that rose to 700.

The company acquired W.H. Miles Shoe Company of Richmond, Virginia, in 1950.

Miles was one of the largest shoe store chains in the country by 1951. It operated directly or through wholly owned subsidiaries 137 retail stores in New York selling shoes, shoe accessories, hosiery, and women's handbags. The company also owned 100 wholly owned subsidiaries operating primarily to hold leases or titles to stores sub-leased to Miles. Furthermore, the company had an additional seventy operating subsidiaries that managed retail stores with the name Miles Shoes in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.